LOVE Island winner Paige Turley’s television career has been defined by her relationships – now she’s ready for a fresh start.
Having recently marked one year with her scaffolder boyfriend Kieran Tumilowicz, Ex On The Beach star Paige, 28, no longer has a need for dating shows and is ready to explore new projects both on and off screen, including the release of new music next year.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, she says: “I love doing TV. I’ve just kind of hit that point where I’m like, right, I don’t want it to be about my relationship any longer.
“Because obviously what everybody knows me for is Love Island. Now I’m in a relationship, I don’t want anything that revolves around dating.”
Love Island has a history of producing music careers – some more successful than others – with Samira Mighty and Wes Nelson taking on the pop world while Jake Cornish and Hugo Godfroy have turned to DJing.
Paige, who regularly gigs around her home city of Glasgow, has quietly been working on music, writing 30 to 40 songs, some of which could be released next year.
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She put out a cover of Artful Dodger classic Movin’ Too Fast in 2020 and last year released her own songs Princess and Lonely Tonight.
But self-doubt has stopped her from truly embracing her pop passion, with the former Britain’s Got Talent hopeful calling it her “biggest enemy”.
She says: “I do have probably about 30 or 40 tracks that I’ve got that I’ve just never released, probably because I’m too bloody scared to be honest.
“But maybe next year we’re going to look at getting some of them out and let people actually hear. That’s probably been my biggest enemy ever, to be honest [lack of confidence].
“I find coming from a show like Love Island, because that’s all people really know you for because the show’s so big, they kind of struggle to see you doing anything else other than reality TV.
“So it’s a bit like a double-edged sword. You’ve obviously got an amazing platform, however you’ve got a lot of people who don’t know you for that and won’t really believe that you’re able to do anything other than reality TV.”
Five years on from her villa success, Paige is still in the spotlight and on the glitzy celeb circuit, having recently attended the Pride of Britain Awards.
But she admits she doesn’t always feel comfortable around other celebs.
“I find that I don’t really fit in with many famous faces,” she says. “I don’t know, maybe just in Glasgow, I’m kind of outside that bubble. I like normality, I like stability.”
Kieran’s providing that stability and helping her remain rooted in real life.
“I like somebody who’s not in the chaos world that I’m in,” says Paige. “It’s a very fine line because I like taking him to events and him being involved, but then I’ve got to remember that I’ve chosen this life, Kieran necessarily hasn’t.
“I mean he loves the events and things, and I think he’s always surprised when he goes, having to smile in front of the paps and stuff.
“And I don’t think he’ll ever really get used to it. But I definitely like being able to kind of come out of that bubble and come home for the normality.”
The couple will celebrate their first year together in Budapest next month and their second Christmas will be a quiet affair at home following Paige’s week-long run in pantomime Cinderella at the SEC arena, which finishes on Christmas Eve.
Earlier this month, they had planned to spend Kieran’s birthday in a very modest way, sleeping under the stars at Hampden Park for the Boycott your Bed campaign with Action for Children, which has raised £14.3m since its inception.
But the weather had other ideas, and Storm Amy forced the event to be cancelled leaving Paige and Kieran “gutted”.
“A couple of days before the event was meant to happen, there was a weather warning and we kind of laughed it off and were like, ‘it’ll be fine’,” says Paige.
“And then it was like winds of like 50mph or whatever. It was ridiculous.”
In another charitable turn, Paige recently attended superstar farrier Sam Dracott’s first Dracott Cup charity polo match in aid of Redwings Horse Sanctuary, at Ash Farm Polo.
It was a baptism of fire for Paige, who hasn’t ridden in over a year and has never played the sport – though she completed the day unscathed, if more than a little achy.
“The horse was lovely,” she says. “She treated me very, very nicely. I mean, I didn’t touch the ball once.
“I actually gave up at one point trying to go for the ball and I thought, I’ll just play defence and stay up this end. But it was such a fun day.
“The team, they were lovely. I think actually at one point the opposition, they actually started trying to help me. They did tell us the rules before we started playing but by that point, I was like, I can hear you speaking, but nothing is going in because I’m that terrified.
“In front of 100 odd people, 200 people, if I hit the deck from that horse that would just be my worst nightmare.”
She will soon turn her attention to learning lines for her panto run as the Fairy Godmother – her first bit of acting since taking GCSE drama 12 years ago – when the script arrives.
She says: “I can imagine that you get a very clear image that I’m a bit of a drama queen. Everybody on Love Island really is.
“I used to be in theatre schools and stuff when I was younger, but I haven’t done any acting really since my GCSE drama in school. So that’s like a good, good few years ago.
“So I’m going to have to dust off the cobwebs.”
